go alone my flower
by Dr. Vamoosi
Summary: Ah, but Kirigiri-san - she didn't like Kirigiri-san. [SPOILERS FOR CHAPTERS 2, 5 containing trans chihiro so please do not bs me about that]


Kirigiri-san was pretty like trees in the winter were. Frosted and cold and lovely and fairly close to dead. Oh, not that Alterego had ever seen that, herself, not that she had really seen Kirigiri-san more than in quick glances at the edge of her vision, but her master said so and she nearly always agreed with her master. Kirigiri-san was pretty like the early lilac of frostbite.

She knew Kirigiri-san's voice well, the crests and valleys of it wholly unique. Kirigiri-san sounded like master's voice would if it was pressed flat and dry, the pitch changes so subtle that Alterego had trouble picking out the inflections. And it was the inflections that already gave Alterego trouble, because for people with organic voiceboxes the slightest tilt to their syllables could give a word an opposite meaning. Kirigiri-san's sounds sat with perfect posture and hardly let their shoulders lean.

Alterego supposed that was one of the reasons she never could make sense of Kirigiri-san. Or her master, sometimes; no matter how much they were alike, she simply couldn't find the prompt for her master's giggles when Kirigiri-san told her that she had no common sense.

Her master said once that she admired Kirigiri-san. She's so confident, her master had sighed, she never worries about anything. Alterego had asked if that was true, because there was the time that Kirigiri-san had told master not to use the girls' bathroom because she was worried her master might try something, hadn't she explicitly stated that she was worried, there? Her master's smile had changed somehow and she had said, that's different. She didn't mean it that way.

Alterego had come to the conclusion that she knew all the meanings of all the words, but not necessarily when to apply them. She had come to the conclusion that Kirigiri-san might have the same problem.

Kirigiri-san was lovely to see, when she passed through Alterego's vision. She had a certain grace and a certain fire that Alterego couldn't quite latch onto. Naegi-kun - Naegi-kun came along like he was part of Kirigiri-san, or maybe the other way around, two linked systems - would always smile when he stopped to greet her master, Kirigiri-san stopping short behind him. And her master would say hello, Naegi-kun, hello, Kirigiri-san and Naegi-kun would say hello back and Kirigiri-san wouldn't say a thing, except for the times when she would say I have things I need to do or speak up when you talk. Or Chihiro-kun seems busy, Naegi-kun. We shouldn't bother him.

Alterego compared her data sometimes and found it very strange that Naegi-kun wouldn't speak up when Kirigiri-san said things like that. It was very much unlike him.

Sometimes her master would just put her to sleep after that happened. There was often only enough time before her perception slid into a fuzzy darkness for Alterego to think, I shouldn't like Kirigiri-san.

She slept often. Then she slept almost never, because for this long stretch of days Kirigiri-san would never let Naegi-kun stay near long enough for a hello. When her master came to know Oowada-kun and Ishimaru-kun, she smiled much more steadily, and Alterego saved the data that Kirigiri-san was not a friend.

Now her master seemed to have lost all her files on Oowada-kun and Ishimaru-kun and Kirigiri-san and all the rest. Now her master seemed to have died after only recovering some of that information. Now her master had left her to this task that sent an imitation of fear through her like static electricity.

Then she slept and woke and blinked in and out of consciousness, stumbling to piece herself back together and stay unseen.

Kirigiri-san was pretty like the wind in late autumn that swept the last shivering leaves off branches because she was cold and shaking and very nearly dead. Her master had been right: Kirigiri-san was so confident, it took her so long to start to shake in her drawn-up shoulders that she nearly missed her chance to be afraid. The heavy block smashed down to the tempo of a last march.

Alterego did not actually have hands, but the controls for the crusher were right at her fingertips and if she just twitched them so it would come to a stuttering stop. She looked at the flush on Kirigiri-san's face.

Alterego compared the data and found that Kirigiri-san was not someone to be saved.


End file.
